Maguy Marin's doll's-house account of Cinderella is like the Victorian rocking horse on which the Prince rides: appealing to look at, fun for a while, then its limited range of motion palls. Once the old-fashioned novelty has worn off, you realise it's not going anywhere.

Created in 1985, Cinderella has served ever since as Lyon Opera Ballet's calling-card. Its puppet images soften up audiences for the harder-edged modern work in which the company excels. Yorgos Loukos, its director for the past 15 years, has commissioned the kind of repertoire that the restructured Scottish Ballet, under its new director, Ashley Page, might emulate. They don't do conventional classics: ballet-trained dancers perform works by contemporary choreographers, some requiring point work, others bare feet or boots. When they dance Coppelia, Carmen or Romeo and Juliet, there's always an original take on a familiar story.

Marin's provocative gimmick in Cinderella is to rob dancers of the physical attributes that make them special. She pads their slender limbs, constricts their movements and puts masks over their faces. They have to try harder to be expressive, tilting the masks to catch the light, reaching out with their rigid arms. Baby-doll Cinderella is perpetually poignant, her blue prince a boyish blank. The Ugly Sisters and Wicked Stepmother are scowling sumo wrestlers, squashing her attempts to assert herself.

They all live in a three-storey structure stuffed with battered toys. The Fairy Godmother, waving a Star Wars light sabre, arranges for Cinderella to attend the Prince's birthday party on the second floor. Three fairy attendants in Barbie-pink toe shoes have taught her a simple dance. Now we're in trouble, for the fairies do bad ballet and floppy-bodied Cinders is a slow learner.

When she pulls herself together to dance a pas de deux with the Prince, they can communicate only dumb longing. Childlike, they betray the ballet conventions on which Prokofiev's (recorded) ballet score relies. His magical falling-in-love music cries out for lyrical choreography. Marin sticks to the grotesque, wasting lavish waltzes on galumphing party guests. She interrupts the score with baby gurgles, contrasting infantile innocence with the cruelty of growing up.

By the time the Prince sets out on his rocking-horse travels in search of Cinderella, I was as frustrated as a toddler. Too much pathos, not enough interest. Although the programme notes make grandiloquent claims for the virtues of fairy tales and cardboard theatre, Marin never uses dance and music for what they alone can convey: feelings too profound for words or dumb show.

The Bonnie Bird Theatre at the centre of the new Laban building inaugurated its first week of public performances with enticing double-bills. The only drawback to the colourful oasis on Deptford Creek is the fearsome journey it involves: night-time walkers could do with light-sabred guards to escort us through the surrounding wasteland.

Worth the trek, though, for a rare sighting of Akram Khan's company, who spend much of their time touring abroad. Kaash, Khan's collaboration with Anish Kapoor and Nitin Sawhney, was given its premiere at the South Bank in May last year. It then went into orbit and won't be seen in London again until December.

Kaash's brief Laban re-appearance proved how much it has been tightened up, losing the turgid elements that had bogged down its middle section. Now, instead of dancers' voices posing rhetorical questions (the title is Hindi for 'if'), Sawhney's soundtrack fragments and distorts their syllables. Like their gestures, the sounds are both abstract and meaningful. The piece draws on ancient myths and modern physics to describe the cyclical creation and destruction of the universe. There are echoes of Hindu gods in the poses the dancers adopt, in the rhythmic chants Khan sings out to set them going.

They are wonderfully assured now, keeping pace with Khan as he spins galaxies into being, resisting and accepting the black hole of Kapoor's backdrop.

Framed by the theatre's proscenium arch, the light-saturated painting, with its infinitely dark heart, is an integral part of the dance. Soon, you lose the sense that Kaash has been choreographed and accept it as an elemental force. Coming down to earth after its apocalyptic ending is a shock, an impossible act for anyone to follow.